But when the water in the pot was about to boil the island began to move, and the monks ran to the boat, leaving behind everything they had brought ashore, and begged Brendan for protection. The monks spent the night in prayer on the island while Brendan remained in the boat in the morning Brendan ordered his men to sing mass and they did so, and then they brought meat and fish from the boat to the island, and started a fire and put a pot to boil on it. Brendan urged his men to land on the island, and they did so, finding it to be rocky, with no sandy shore and just a few trees but no other plants. According to Chapters 10 and 11 of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, the oldest extant manuscript of which dates to the tenth or eleventh century, St. Brendan of Ardfert and Clonfert (484-577) during his alleged Atlantic wanderings in search of the Terra Repromissionis or Paradise. The most famous mythical floating island of the Middle Ages is certainly that encountered by St. Here the idea of mobility is invoked to account for the difficulty of locating the islands. No explanation of the island’s mobility is supplied, but the fixing of the island in place functions as a permanent memorial of a very important addition to the Greek pantheon.Īccording to the Chinese philosopher Lieh-tzu, who lived in the fourth century BC, the five Chinese mythical paradise islands, which are named Tai-yu, Yuan-chiao, Fang-hu, Ying-chu, and P’eng-lai, all originally floated. Perhaps the most evocative account of this myth is in the Anthologia Latina :Īnd as the wind urged moved lightly here and there, The myth that the island of Delos once floated is well known: the island was only fixed in place after Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis there. Or perhaps the mobility is intended to reflect the changeability of the winds themselves.Īn ancient commentator on Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica 3.41-43 records the curious belief that all islands were once floating islands, thus painting an engaging picture of the early history of the earth, with all of the islands moving about freely. In this case the island’s mobility seems to imply an advantage enjoyed by Aeolus: since he controls the winds, he can have them move his island wherever he pleases. Odysseus asks Aeolus to help him again, but Aeolus sends him away harshly, telling him that it would not be right for him to help one who is clearly hated by the gods (72-75).
After ten days’ sail Odysseus comes within sight of Ithaca, but then he falls asleep, and his men, thinking that the bag Aeolus gave Odysseus must contain presents of gold and silver, open it, releasing the winds, which drive the ships back to Aeolus’ floating island (31-55). The house was fragrant and rang with the sounds of the feastĭuring the day, while at night each by his modest wifeĪeolus, whom Zeus had made keeper of the winds (10.21), entertains Odysseus for a month, and then gives him a magical device that should insure his passage back home to Ithaca: a leather bag into which he puts all of the winds except the West Wind, which carries Odysseus’ ships on their way home. Six daughters, and six sons now in their prime,Īnd he gave his daughters to his sons to be their wives.Īnd these beside their dear father and cherished motherįeasted perpetually, with countless good things set before them Twelve children had been born to him in his palace, Of unbreakable bronze, and a sheer cliff running up to it. On a floating island, the whole enclosed by a wall Next we came to the Aeolian island, where dweltĪeolus the son of Hippotas, beloved by the immortal gods,
The first floating island that appears in western literature is that of Aeolus, the god of the winds, in Homer’s Odyssey 10.1-12:
This material provides an interesting case study of a situation in which an apparently mythical object has a corresponding reality, but the great differences between floating islands in myth and floating islands in reality clearly indicate the great transformative power of the human imagination. In this article I will survey some instances of mythical floating islands in the sea, to examine the role that they have played in human thought and literature and then look at some of the rare accounts of real floating islands seen at sea. A floating island-can such a thing exist? Can the chunks of the solid earth on which we stand drift easily about the surface of a body of water? The idea of a floating island seems impossible, something from the realmsnip of fantasy, an invention of poets or mythographers.
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